ALP holds Melbourne

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Labor frontbencher Lindsay Tanner believes he has seen off a strong challenge from the Greens in Labor's former safe seat of Melbourne - for this election, anyway.

Early figures showed a 10 per cent swing to him in two-party terms, half coming from former Democrat votes and half returning Labor defectors from the 2001 election.

But the Greens appear to have laid serious future claim to the seat, which includes a swathe of suburbs ringing Melbourne's CBD. The party has polled closer to the Liberals and may finish ahead of them, leaving it an ALP/Greens contest.

The challenge in the Labor heartland, held by Labor for a century, forced it into a costly rearguard skirmish. Although only a sideshow to the ALP/Coalition contest, it tied up a significant amount of resources in money and people that Labor could have used in marginal seats elsewhere.

The battle was fought with passion between communications and community relations spokesman Mr Tanner and the Greens' Gemma Pinnell, a tertiary education union officer, who says the Greens "are winning Melbourne in more long-term ways".

Ms Pinnell, 31, believes her party gained credibility from having pushed Labor into a policy of saving old-growth forest.

Liberal Jerry Dimitroulis had a comparatively low-key booth presence, but his preferences would go to the Greens if Labor did not have an absolute majority.

Mr Tanner, 48, an intellectual politician with four books to his name and a leader of the left-wing faction, has held the seat since 1993.

As a former student activist, union leader and lawyer, he has a big personal reputation among the large group of tertiary-educated people living in suburbs such as Carlton and Fitzroy. But federal Labor's shift to the right in some policy areas, to shadow the conservative Howard Government, has sometimes left Mr Tanner, who is locked into supporting the ALP caucus, in an awkward spot.

His problems became serious in the 2001 election when Labor's concurrence with most of the Liberals' anti-refugee policies, centring on the Tampa, caused dismay on the Left and 10 per cent of his vote defected to the Greens. But he says the feeling around the booths was "infinitely better" this time.

Mr Tanner knew he would be in trouble if his primary vote dropped to 43 per cent, but it appeared some defectors had returned and Labor's vote in the government high-rise flats held firm.